Dozens of nurses at Magee-Womens Hospital gathered Thursday to demand that UPMC not interfere with their attempt to form a union. Labor union SEIU Healthcare PA filed on behalf of around 1,000 registered nurses and advanced practice professionals with the National Labor Relations Board earlier this week.
Pittsburgh labor leaders and government officials stood alongside nurses in a parklet near UPMC Magee-Womens campus. Speakers alleged they had received emails from their employer that seemingly discouraged organizing. Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato said UPMC has a “moral obligation” to allow for a union election as one of the region’s largest private employers.
“A lot of our taxpayer dollars actually go to support UPMC’s work and those resources should be going to patient care, not anti-union campaigns,” she said.
Innamorato, whose campaign was supported by SEIU Healthcare PA, has been a fixture at labor events for medical workers across the county, speaking in support of nurses at West Penn Hospital during contract negotiations last summer. She argued that when nurses unionize and improve their working conditions, patient care improves too.
“You deserve to be heard, to be respected and to be empowered in the decisions that shape the care that you deliver each and every day,” she said. “Allegheny County sees you and we have your back.”
Other elected officials at the rally were Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, Congresswoman Summer Lee and half a dozen county and state representatives.
Magee nurses told WESA earlier this week that their concerns about inadequate staffing and poor retention of experienced nurses threatens to impact the quality of care provided at one of Pittsburgh’s largest labor and delivery centers. Some nurses who work in the neonatal intensive care unit allege they’re caring for more patients than is recommended by hospital industry groups.
“Too many times we walk into our shift without the staff resources or ancillary support we need to provide the level of care that we know our patients deserve,” said Jean Stone, a labor and delivery nurse and member of the organizing committee. “I see nurses and practitioners hustling to do everything they can with every minute of their shift. And I see families not receiving the kind of personalized education that we all want to give them before they leave with their newborn.”
Magee nurses have not yet set an election date for their union. Their organizing effort builds on successful contract bids won by other unionized medical workers including UPMC’s Western Psychiatric Hospital and Allegheny Health Network’s flagship Allegheny General Hospital. Nurses from both facilities joined Magee workers at Thursday’s rally.
Nearly half of all Allegheny County babies are born at Magee every year, and the hospital’s intensive care unit provides specialized care for around 1,500 critically ill babies annually.
UPMC has not responded to WESA’s requests for a response to Magee nurses organizing. But spokesperson Paul Wood issued an email to the press Thursday that pushed back on claims that Magee is understaffed or experiencing a high turnover rate. In the email subject line, UPMC indicated that the message was intended to correct “the SEIU narrative.”
“Current nursing turnover is 4.8% at UPMC Magee, compared to 16.7% at UPMC hospitals where nurses are unionized,” Wood said.
UPMC did not respond to questions about the source of their data. The health system declined to specify whether the statistics cited for unionized hospitals represented an average rate across multiple facilities, or if those hospitals all had significantly higher turnover and vacancy rates.
UPMC also stated that the current staff vacancy rate at Magee is 1%, and that it’s far lower than the 12.5% vacancy rate at the health system’s unionized hospitals.
But Stone argued that such a statistic is misleading because UPMC controls the number of nurses it deems as appropriate to fully staff Magee. She’s worked there for more than a decade, during which she said some positions would be eliminated after an employee left.
“They get to decide how many nurses equals fully staffed,” she said. “When you control everything, when you can control the narrative, then you control the reality.”
She said UPMC should seek input about staffing needs from those who work the hospital floors. And added that decisions that impact patients, “must be made with input from those of us that work directly with those patients.”
“We all, whether we work at the Steel Tower or at the bedside, play an important role in making sure our patients receive the care they need,” she said.
UPMC denounced claims that too few nurses are on the clock at a time, explaining that Magee uses “flexible scheduling for each shift, based on patient acuity, to make real-time evidence-based decisions on staffing.” The health system also explained that it maintains a 31-nurse “resource pool” that can be deployed to supplement additional needs within the hospital.
But Stone noted that when additional help is needed, two to four staffers from that pool can be called in at a time. Stone serves as part of the resource pool herself and said she’s often rushing between multiple departments at a time when all of them need additional hands. And she claimed that nurses are sent home as soon as things slow down.
“I feel like the most flexibility that's demonstrated in our shift staffing is their eagerness to down-staff … because one patient gets discharged,” she added.
Magee nurses were supported by Allegheny County’s larger labor movement Thursday, including the Allegheny-Fayette Central Labor Council. AFL-CIO president Darrin Kelly said Magee nurses are organizing with the support of the 100,000 unionized workers in western Pennsylvania represented by the labor council.
During his remarks, Kelly demanded UPMC allow for a free and fair election without any interference, something he called “the American right” of everyone gathered.
“We recognize UPMC’s rights, but I will tell you this: you can either see the light or you can feel the heat,” Kelly said. “One way or another, this election is happening.”
